A Class by Brandon Sanderson

Hidden away at in the middle of a blog post by Brandon Sanderson, he said that the lectures from his creative writing class were all online.

Say what?

So, I went to check them out. And sure enough, there they were. Each lecture is broken into multiple videos separated more-or-less by topic. Many of the videos also have the notes for the class. In a word, it's awesome! (Thanks to WriteAboutDragons for doing all the hard work.)

Want to know how Brandon plots his books? Go here.

How about advice on participating in a writers group? Got that.

Creating sympathetic characters. Meeting agents. World building. Fight scenes. And more and more. In fact, there are over 15 hours of lectures all online for your learning pleasure.

And if you're like me and don't want to click the next lecture each time, I've got you covered.

I created one, massive playlist that will start at the beginning and play all the way through to the end. Of course, you can start anywhere in the playlist and it will happily load the next video and the next. So you can  sit back and enjoy for as long as you want.

You can find the playlist here.

Personally, I'm going through the lectures as I prepare for Nano next month. I'm just past the class where he talks about creating characters and I'm going through the exercises. If your a video learner, and like Brandon's style of writing, you might like his classes, too.

Go ahead and give them a try. It's free.

* They say a picture is worth a thousand words--this picture surely is. It's titled Secrets by Sarah Horrigan. I got sucked into all the wonderful images on her photo stream, it's well worth your time. In fact, I may contact her and see if she'll let me do a whole blog post on her work. It's great.

Show Off

It's been six months, so I had to go to the dentist. *cue ominous music* Before leaving the house I made sure to brush and floss, twice. Then I thought to myself, "Isn't this like cleaning your house before the maid comes over?"

I know that no matter how much I brush and floss the dentist will clean my teeth better. So, why do we spend the extra time getting ready? (You know you do it too.) I think it's because, deep down, we're show offs. We want to look good for other people.

Don't fight it. You know you are. So, let's use it to our advantage: Writing Groups.

One of the ways my writing group helps me is that I'm motivated to step up my game. I spend a little extra effort polishing. I double-check my grammar. I make sure I have clear descriptions, the conflict is front-and-center, internal reactions draw the reader close, and the whole chapter moves the story forward but still leaves them with questions. In short, I'm trying to show off.

By stretching myself each week I've found that my best is getting better. It's not that my first drafts are awesome now. Ha! But my ability to fix and polish on the second (third, fourth, fifth) draft has improved markedly.

* Smile picture taken by joyousjoym can be found on Flickr.